It’s unknown whether Gasser, recovering from last autumn’s surgery to repair a damaged knee ligament, will be permitted to compete when the Badgers travel to Canada next week for a series of exhibition games in Ottawa and Toronto.

“He’s not cleared to do everything yet,” coach Bo Ryan told Sporting News. “I’ll know Sunday whether or not he’s going to be allowed to play in Canada.”

When Gasser does return to playing, it’s not established what position he will fill. He was a shooting guard his first two seasons and started 66 games, proving himself as a reliable open shooter and one of the Big Ten’s top defenders. He converted to point guard prior to last season in order to fill the vacancy created by Jordan Taylor’s departure, but his injury created an opportunity so ably seized by Traevon Jackson.

Now, Ryan said, with Jackson and shooter Ben Brust established, Gasser could play point, shooting guard or small forward. “We went small a few times in the past. It wouldn’t be unusual,” Ryan said. And that could include deploying 6-7 sophomore star-in-waiting Sam Dekker at power forward. “It’ll work itself out,” Ryan said.

The important thing is the Badgers—looking to extend their run of top-four Big Ten finishes to 13 consecutive seasons—have lots of options and Gasser is one of the primary reasons.

“He’s been in the shooting drills, shooting the heck out of it,” Ryan said. “He’s had a lot of time to work on his shooting. And he hasn’t lost his ability to find people. In drills where there isn’t contact, he has been making terrific passes. He does a lot of good things, because he’s such a heady player.”

In the frontcourt, Ryan is excited by the progress made in pre-tour practices by center Frank Kaminsky, who’ll have to take over for Jared Berggren. Kaminsky already was a dangerous face-up shooter, which fits the Wisconsin system. Now he has gained strength and is playing aggressively.

Ryan also warns to look out for freshman Nigel Hayes, a 6-7, 230-pound product of Toledo’s Whitmer High. Every freshman has to find his way through Ryan’s Swing offense and his emphasis on defensive execution, but Ryan still termed Hayes “the real deal.”

Ryan doesn’t always use his freshmen extensively. Even Dekker, one of the program’s most heralded recruits, only averaged 22 minutes per game. But Wisconsin needs some physical power, and Ryan is encouraged by Hayes’ early work.

One genuine positive as Gasser works toward his return is he’s shown no reluctance to get back on the court—which, if you recall Derrick Rose’s circumstance in Chicago, can be an issue for players recovering from an injury as profound as an ACL tear.

“He’s just anxious,” Ryan said. “You know how players are. They want to go right now. He’s only been held back because the medical people are holding him back. He was always fearless, anyhow.

“In this day and age, it’s good that they go through all these batteries of test for clearance, which is great. Because if I had a son or daughter playing, I’d certainly want everyone to be that careful.”

2. The SEC schedule hasn’t been released yet, but Tennessee coach Cuonzo Martin let it slip that his Volunteers won’t play rival Kentucky twice this season. That a big deal?

DeCourcy: You blow up 60 years of habit or routine or tradition, whatever word you want to use, that’s a big deal.

No one’s going to pretend that this has been a scorching rivalry, but then, not many SEC teams have been able to manage such a thing with Kentucky. Billy Donovan’s Florida program has come closest of anyone in decades, which is why the league chose to protect that series as part of its scheduling plan.

Going forward, only one series for each team became a guaranteed home-and-home each year. That’s a mistake. The Big East built its basketball brand by always ensuring the best teams would play one another. This season, UT looks as though it will rank as one of the strongest challengers in the SEC, but the Vols will not get to play the leading contender, UK, at home.

Some Kentucky fans might say this is a big deal only for the Vols, who lose a marquee game and a chance to sell out the immense Thompson-Boling Arena, but it also costs the Wildcats a chance at a quality road win in the conference—and the Vols a chance at a home win that could be important to their NCAA Tournament at-large case.

Nobody wins here. Which is kind of how the whole conference-expansion thing has gone.

DeCourcy: Nothing bigger than “Breaking Bad” right now, is there? Nearly 6 million people watched the first episode of the second half of the final season. And wouldn’t it be menacing if Izzo came out in a shaved head and goatee declaring, “I am the danger”?

OK, so yes, Walter White is a meth dealer and violent criminal, and that probably wouldn’t be the best message to send on the campus of an institution of higher learning. Which is one of the many reasons I’m not a marketing genius at a university.

It still would be cool to see Izzo warn the rest of the Big Ten Conference to “Tread lightly.”

4. We haven’t heard much about the Miami Hurricanes this offseason. Without Shane Larkin, coach Jim Larranaga can’t expect another 29 wins, can he?

DeCourcy: Larkin enjoyed a tremendous season in 2013-14, jetting from obscurity—well, however much obscurity can be granted to the son of a Hall of Fame baseball player—to All-America status in just one year. His mature point guard play was the most important factor in Miami’s advance to the ACC regular-season and tournament championships and the NCAA Sweet 16.

No good team lost more from last season. The only rotation player who returns is wing Rion Brown, who averaged 22 minutes and 6.4 points and actually went through a pretty nasty shooting slump as the rest of the team was surging. After hitting 39.4 percent of his 3-pointers as a sophomore, he plunged to 29.2 percent last season.

Larranaga is a resourceful coach. If point guard Angel Rodriguez were to be awarded a waiver to compete immediately for the Hurricanes, that would do a lot toward making them competitive this season. But the Canes will not be keeping the ACC’s more established powers company at the top of the standings this season either way.

5. Some of the game’s most successful coaches—Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Boeheim, Rick Pitino, Roy Williams, Thad Matta and Tom Izzo—are nowhere to be found on Twitter. Among those, who would you most want to see join?

DeCourcy: I have it on good authority—the man himself, and he said it publicly on his radio show—that Krzyzewski actually is on Twitter. He lurks. Somewhere among my 29,000-plus followers is a shadowy figure who listens but doesn’t speak. After Krzyzewski told me he was listening, his stature made me think for a moment about whether I was tweeting anything that seemed out of line.

But then I went right back to complaining about the Reds’ lack of plate discipline.

If any of the coaches you mentioned could be actively tweeting, I’d probably pick Pitino. Because just the stories written about him just this summer show he’s not just out there killing his downtime 18 holes at a time.

Of course we know he had a small piece of a horse that ran the Kentucky Derby. CBS’ Gary Parrish wrote about how Pitino took his son to a Pitbull concert for his birthday.

ESPN’s Jeff Goodman wrote about how Pitino sprung an offer to join his coaching staff to a gentleman, Mike Balado, who’d gotten caught between accepting two different jobs and wound up with neither. So Balado went from the possibility of being unemployed to making six figures and working with a national title contender.